Sewing Tuesday: Royal Wedding embroidery.

Hi there! 

I am away visiting friends and family for the Easter holidays, that's why I've chosen to do some embroidery. Embroidery is great for when you don't have a lot of time all at once and you might need to put down what you're doing and play with a cat or go for a walk or something. Embroidery is great as you can put it down and pick it up whenever you like.

I asked my friend Miss Topper what she thought I should embroider. She thought something about the Royal Wedding would be nice, since it's coming up on Friday. So, here's my design. 

I chose something simple as I've not done much embroidery before. I did OK, although I think the date at the bottom in yellow is a bit squiffy. I'm fine with that though as I'm still learning.

You will need:

• An embroidery hoop.
• Some cloth that's about twice the size of your embroidery hoop. 
• Scissors.
• Coloured threads, any colours you like.
• A black marker or felt pen.
• A pencil.
• A needle.
• Some paper.

Step 1.


Draw around the inside of the embroidery hoop.

Draw your design inside this circle. If you aren't much in to the Royal Wedding then you could do your own name or your friend's name and give it to her as a present. Keep designing until you are happy with what you've drawn. It can be anything you like.

Then go over the design with the black pen.

 Step 2.


Lay the cloth over the top of your design, put it away from the edges as you need to leave space for the embroidery hoop to get a good grip.

Trace your design with a pencil on to the cloth.

If you can't see through the cloth, try taping the paper and the cloth to the window, that might help.

Step 3.

Centre your design on top of the smaller hoop and place the larger hoop on top .

Push it down so that the cloth is trapped between them.

Tighten the little screw at the top there if you think it needs it. Embroidery is much easier when the cloth is held tightly an can't move around.

Step 4.


Sewing along the pencil lines with backstitch.
Choose your first colour of thread and use it doubled up, tie a knot in the end. Start from the back and make a small stitch like mine below. Then go back up a little way away from that stitch.

Go back down close to the first stitch.

Come up with your needle a little way away from your second stitch and go back down close to it. Keep going like this along your pencil line.

If your lines aren't all joined up you will get to a part where you need to jump across to the next line. Do this on the back, like below going from the 'W' to the dot of the 'i'. The back will probably end up pretty messy but don't worry about that.

You can change colours of thread whenever you like - just knot the thread at the back and carry on in the new colour.

Step 5.

If you want to do rainbow stitches, like I've done on the heart, here's how I did them:

Sew some stitches in one of your colours with gaps as even as you can manage. 

With a different colour of thread, sew stitches next to them.

And again.

Keep going until you fill in the gaps. That's it!

Step 6.


This is how I tucked in the spare cloth at the back. I think trimming the cloth a little closer to the embroidery hoop than I did would be a good idea. Mine was a bit bunched up. You could trim yours around in a circle about 3cm out from the hoop.

Sew with running stitch around the edge of the spare fabric.

Pull it tight as you go to gather it up.

Tie a knot to hold it in towards the centre at the back of your hoop.

You're done!
You could hang it up on the wall, or give it to a friend, better still, send it to:

William and Kate
Buckingham Palace
London
England.